www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty71OxyQKKc

Go to Yahoo.com. In the search box, type in:

intext:yoursite.com -site:yoursite.com

The results will bring up all the instances when someone has mentioned your website, but didn’t link to it. You may have to sift through the results a bit, because in some cases they may have linked to your website, but not every time they mentioned your site.

If you find that you are in fact missing out on some linking opportunities, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to send a kind email to the source and ask if they would link it for you. They’re already giving you credit and supporting your site, so there’s no reason that they wouldn’t want to link to you.

If you know of any other great ways of uncovering potentially lost links, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

Purchasing a niche website can be extremely lucrative for you. However, you need to make sure you’re purchasing the right domain name. I’ve found that it’s important to do a little research first.

Here are the steps I follow when determining whether or not I should buy that niche domain.

1. First, check GoDaddy.com (or your preferred domain registry) to see if that great domain name you just thought of is even available.

2. Use keyword tools to research your domain name as a keyword phrase to see what kind of natural search traffic you could possibly obtain. Here are a few free keyword tools:

Google Keyword Tool

SEO Tools

HubSpot (free trial for a limited time)

3. Make sure the Twitter username for your new site exists. You should also look into signing up with other social networks that you might use to promote your site.

Before you purchase your next domain, do a little research. Buying and operating niche websites can be a great business for you, but make sure you don’t pick up a non-productive domain. Otherwise, you may be missing out on a great opportunity to drive free traffic to your niche site.

What are some steps you follow before purchasing your domains?

http://bilbrauer.com

Lately I’ve noticed many tweeps with usernames that don’t resemble their actual name at all. By not using some form of your real name, I feel that you may be missing out on a great branding opportunity. It is extremely hard for people to remember you when your username is a series of numbers, letters, and special characters. Unless you have already built your business around a screen name similar to what @shoemoney has done, I feel that your best chance of building a name for yourself is to use your real name or some shortened version. A few quick examples of people who have used Twitter to aid them in their branding efforts: Guy Kawasaki @guykawasaki, Mike Volpe @mvolpe, and David Meerman Scott @dmscott.

While Twitter is super entertaining, remember that it is an extremely powerful, free tool. Take full advantage of it. What are your thoughts on using Twitter as a branding tool?

I would like to point out that when promoting your personal brand, you should use all resources available to you. It is true that old media tactics seem to be less effective especially given our current economic state, so you would be wise to not invest too much of your budget in television, radio, and print. However, when an opportunity presents itself and you have a chance to promote your brand, you would be silly to not take advantage. New media or old media, the important thing is getting your brand out there.

The main take away here is to understand that it’s OK to operate in the Gray area when it comes to social media. You can be a huge advocate of new media tactics and still utilize strategies of old media. Especially when you are in a situation similar to Gary V. and getting paid to promote your brand on television. What is your take on this?

Internet Marketing Support

Recently, I had the opportunity to test out StumbleUpon.com’s advertising platform for a project I was working on. I was skeptical at first, because when you sign up for a StumbleUpon account it states that each visit will only cost $0.05. I was previously unaware of many places where you could buy traffic for that cheap.

What is StumbleUpon? As you may know, StumbleUpon is a tool that allows people to discover great web pages that match their interests and hobbies. You can click a Stumble button on your browser, and StumbleUpon will open up a web page that should be relevant and new to you. You then tell it whether or not you like that particular page. With millions of web pages on the internet, StumbleUpon aims to make it easier for you to discover new sites that are relevant to you. Tour StumbleUpon Advertising.

Create a Campaign: I would like to focus more on the results of my campaign, so in the interest of saving time, here is a link to promote your page with StumbleUpon. A few pointers when setting up a campaign: I recommend appending a source code to your page URL, so you can track the results more easily with your analytics package. A source code looks like this: http://yoursite.com/?source=1234. I also recommend using the Advanced Options when setting up the campaign. This will allow you to filter your campaign to be displayed to stumblers based on geographic region, age, and gender.

Campaign Results:

Unique campaigns – 4

Campaign duration – 12 days

Campaign budget – $1,014

Total visits – 20,413

Cost per visit – $0.049

Results from one of the four campaigns

Conclusion: After looking at the results, I was pleased to see that StumbleUpon delivered traffic for $0.05 per visitor. Another bonus was that once the campaign was over, I was still seeing a significant amount of traffic from those links used in the campaign. If you include the extra traffic, you could say that the cost per visitor was considerably less than $0.05.

I could only find two drawbacks with this ad platform. One, my bounce rate went up quite a bit. This is due to the nature of StumbleUpon. Stumblers typically land on your page, take a quick glance, and then leave. Two, I had to add new campaigns every once in a while. It seems like campaigns can become stale.

Overall, I would highly recommend StumbleUpon Advertising to young web sites looking to get quick cheap traffic. Have you used StumbleUpon Advertising before? I am interested in hearing what your experiences were.

BilBraur.com

OK. I just wanted to get this out before someone else does, and I’m left standing here saying “doh”. Many of you may have heard of this service called ChaCha.com. They say that it’s like having a smart friend that you can call anytime for answers to random questions. You simply call or text in your questions and you will get a response within minutes. It seems to be a quality service. I haven’t heard too many complaints yet, and I actually know a few people that work for ChaCha; they seem to enjoy it.

(The big hairy butt lurking around the corner) I strongly feel that your privacy will be compromised in the future if you choose to use this service. With mobile advertising gaining popularity, your mobile phone number along with other personal information will become extremely valuable. As mobile marketing matures, more dollar signs will be placed on your number.

I know what you’re thinking. ChaCha has a privacy policy that says they won’t share my personal information. That’s right, but that will not deter companies from contacting ChaCha and offering to pay big money for their number list. Let’s consider email marketing for a moment. Wouldn’t you say that you could buy an email list from any company at any time? I would. Every company has a privacy policy that most likely states that they will not share your private information with a third party, but I think we all know that’s BS. Why else would your inbox keep getting blown up?

I don’t want to totally discredit ChaCha, but I honestly feel that the main motive is to harvest your mobile phone number for its implied future value. You might think I’m being paranoid, but consider yourself warned. Swim at your own risk.